"Of course not."
Shen Yi shook his head, the solemnity on his face unmistakable.
"If it were you, what would you do?" Shen Yi turned his face to look at Winnie. In truth, he already had an answer in his heart; he asked only to see what Winnie thought.
"Me?"
"On all of Blue Star, the only person I care about is Yukimi. I don't care about anyone else."
Winnie shrugged. Being asked this so suddenly by Shen Yi made her feel a little guilty too.
"Exactly."
"What you care about and need to consider is completely different from me."
Shen Yi nodded, seeming quite satisfied with Winnie's answer, and his gaze drifted into the distance.
"Blue Star, this planet, has always been divided among various nations. By all rights, I should only need to take care of Xia Country, where I am. But the most interesting part is right here. If I only take care of Xia Country, then the people within Xia Country, the ones around me whom I'm familiar with, will have no external threats at all, and so they'll turn toward internal conflict."
"In other words, if I ignore the existence of everything outside Xia Country, then Xia Country will instead collapse even faster because of internal strife."
"That is also why I still have to take other countries into account."
"To make Xia Country last longer, and to make the women around me more united, to make the whole of Xia Country more united."
"I previously kept allowing some of the Black Fog monsters to exist without dealing with them. A large part of the reason was that I knew the women around me, including Xia Country, only have their current status because of the Black Fog. But if, after I leave, the Black Fog